


Words on the Page Come to Life

by ivyspinners



Category: Wicked Lovely Series - Melissa Marr
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Gen Mini-Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 02:52:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4418297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyspinners/pseuds/ivyspinners
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not softness she needs. Not yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words on the Page Come to Life

**Author's Note:**

> For multi-genfic [Narrative Challenge Bingo](http://multi-genfic.livejournal.com/11981.html). Card 7, _in media res_

There are hundreds of journals lining the cabin's shelves, left to right, neatly ordered by what seems to be age. On one side, journals with clean, starch-white pages. She opens one. The language is familiar in its informality; Rika's journals, then. Further back, tucked into shadows, the volumes crumble with age. She wonders how far back they go; she wonders how old Keenan is. It's enough to make her laugh without mirth.

She is too cold to laugh with mirth.

The next journal she opens, perhaps three paces from Rika's last, is written in barely decipherable English. It is English, though, and it feels less indecent to read than Rika's. Rika could have told Donia more secrets, but she had been too uneasy in even the faint Autumn chill to stay.

She tries to imagine the words on the page come to life:

 

_The winter girl is a hundred miles from London wearing stitched leather instead of an elegant dress. She trusts the wolf instinctively, follows the wolf to where the summer king's newest target tends her herb garden. The winter girl kneels by her side, but without bitterness. The winter girl touches those herbs too, but they do not freeze over and die. The winter girl engages the villager in conversation, but it is not to ask to be set free._

_"Let me tell you a story," the winter girl says. "I hear they work better than any other way of imparting wisdom."_

_"I can't exactly leave, can I?" the mortal grumbles_ \--

 

The journal author pauses here, in her account, to say that she likes this mortal.

Her imagination falters. Donia cannot imagine it, nor does she particularly wish to; she could never forget the cold. She closes the book, runs her fingers back several more journal volumes, and tries again.

It is the same handwriting, perhaps a little less practiced, and the first line is, _I hate this._

A frisson of energy runs through her spine. She leaves the first journal on her table, settles into her chair, and keeps reading.

 

fin.


End file.
